Daily Times

Philip Island is located 78 miles from Melbourne, Australia. But the only reason we were going there was to check out the penguins that had made it their habitat. So for us it became Penguin Island. We were told that the birds would put on a “parade” an hour after sunset, by wading ashore and scurrying toward their boroughs.

The drive on a double-decker tour bus went mostly through bedroom communities. But as we got closer to the sea, the scenery changed. It was hilly, grassy and devoid of human presence. It felt eerie.

Fishing villages sprung into view. They had a desolate quality, evoking the scenery of the Russian village in the film ‘Leviathan’, which I had made the mistake of seeing on the 787 Dreamliner that had brought us from here from California. That film was pregnant with foreboding. It had knocked out all my dreams about visiting Russia! On the bus, I found myself saying over and over again this was Australia and not Russia. No gruesome fait awaited us. We had done nothing to anger the gods. Dostoyevsky had not written the script for this tour and neither had Shakespeare. There was no reason to remember Gloucester’s lines from “King Lear”, “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods. They kill us for their sport.”

The island was lovely. We had afternoon tea at the lodge.

Later, we saw a sheep being sheered. The scene from Thomas Hardy’s “Far from the Madding Crowd” came to mind. The poor creature was being held upside down and being administered a rather nasty haircut with dozens of tourists watching.

Later we stopped to view the koalas. We spotted a couple of koalas that were soundly asleep on tree branches. They slept for 20 hours and in the other four hours munched on the leaves of Eucalyptus trees. The whole process left them tired and they dozed off to sleep.

What an interesting life, indeed! We were told not to disturb them. But one man in our group was unable to restrain himself. On spotting a sleeping koala, he started making weird sounds and faces. He had to be shouted down by the rest of us. It was quite a ruckus. Somehow he thought I was the instigator and began to look in my direction with a steady gaze. I walked away, somewhat unsteadied by his fury.

We resumed the journey and the place began to remind me of Scotland. The sun had not gone down so the driver decided to give us a bonus tour of the windswept moors that occupied this portion of the island. We spotted first one, then two and then countless wallabies. They were like mini kangaroos frolicking in the open space. One posed beside the double-decker bus. The cameras clicked away.

The driver, a loquacious woman, gave us the tour to remember as she navigated that Leviathan of a bus through winding and descending roads. We were headed for the beach where the rendezvous with the penguins was going to occur. We were in the upper deck. But the vertigoreflex had been activated. I closed my eyes and the lovely views disappeared.

Finally, we arrived at the viewing area. Darkness was spreading, reminding me of TS Eliot’s lines, “Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky. Like a patient etherised upon a table.”

Our tour entitled us to a half-hour lecture from a marine biologist. We were happily sipping tea and munching on crackers when the biologist passed around a stuffed penguin. It was a bit alarming. We were told how penguins spent their lives. Fifty percent never made it to the sea and died young. Of the ones that did make it to the sea, only twenty percent came back. The others died of starvation. Nobody was there to teach them how to fish. They had to dive more than 200 times a day to catch fish. The ones who died were not washed ashore. Other creatures consumed them. The average life span was some 25 years. I had lost my appetite.

Fishing villages sprung into view. They had a desolate quality, evoking the scenery of the Russian village in the film ‘Leviathan’, which I had made the mistake of seeing on the 787 Dreamliner that had brought us here from California. That film was pregnant with foreboding. It had knocked out all my dreams about visiting Russia

Then she began to walk us over to our viewing hut. We were provided binoculars and chairs. There was a ranger inside but he seemed totally unamenable to conversation. He said his job was to count the penguins. I said: How do you count them? He said, “1, 2, 3” and I said, “Is it computerised?” He said, “No, I just count them manually, like man has been doing over the ages.” I was impressed. The man was also a historian. So I asked how many do you count in a day. He said as few as nine and as many as 2000. Wow. That was quite a range. Then came the unavoidable question: So is it about a thousand on a typical evening? He said something like that.

Outside of the hut were Roman amphitheatre-like cement seats and they were all occupied by people covered from head to toe in blankets and hats. A brisk wind began to blow.

We had encountered a rain shower enroute to the island. So I suspected the seats were wet and uncomfortable all around. But the crowd sat there stoically, in anticipation of the parade, which admittedly was not going to have a Roman character to it.

The moon was nearly full and playing peak-a-boo with the clouds. I wondered if the presence of the moon would alter the behaviour of the penguins. We waited and waited. Nothing happened. Then a cheer went up. A little penguin had appeared: all ten inches of it. Just like the one we had seen during the lecture. These were tiny creatures, much smaller than the ones you would see near the South Pole. Those were ice water penguins. These were warm water penguins.

Then two more appeared, and then there were ten: standing there, just at the edge of the beach, hesitant to take the next step. I assumed they were quite wet. After some hesitation they began to cross the beach. Photography was verboten. But you could download pictures from the website.

Now more were coming out, in batches of fives and tens. It was quite the sight. It was the crowning achievement of the evening. The show was its climax.

The ranger took us out of the hut and walked us toward a boardwalk with a viewing platform that overlooked the show that the penguins were putting on, under a quasi-full moon whose light had now lit up the entire sea in a brilliant silver colour. The little penguins were scurrying past us in groups of tens.

Now it was time to catch the bus and head home. We wanted to fall asleep. But the driver apparently thought we had not had enough of penguins. She put on a children’s movie ‘Surf’s Up’. There was no way to turn off the volume. So I began to watch it. It was amazing. In the end, I was glad I saw it.

The writer has visited 35 countries on six continents. He can be reached at ahmadfaruqui@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, September 20^th 2017.